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Copyright, 18S6, 
By Mrs. Dora Bascom Smith. 



PRESS OT 

fUrktotll anir Cfrnrrfcill, 
boston. 



STRAY ARROWS, 



'T'HE year lies before you, — an unbroken block 
of possible good or ill. The tools are in 
your hand. Whether you will or no, you must 
break its unused surface, and give it some shape 
that shall stand as showing what you are and 
what you can do. 



'T'HE grandest reformation of all the ages will 
begin on that day — if it ever comes — when 
each man stops fretting over the faults of his 
neighbors, and begins the quiet performance of 
his own daily duty. 



~V~OU are on a journey ; and the object of that 
journey is the discovery of the divine secret 
of life : to find your manhood and your woman- 
hood ; to enjoy, to grow, to serve ; to become the 
noblest possible, and to experience the satisfaction 
which is the natural fragrance given out by the 
perfect outfiowering of that in you which is best. 
As you pursue this journey let neither work nor 
play, nor any roadside attractions, nor incidents of 
the way, distract your attention from the end, 
which is the ideal life itself, the eternal goal. 



H^HIS old but ever new world of ours, the earth 
and the sky, is one grand parchment, that, 
though we become so dull as to think it common- 
place, is yet written all over, by God's own hand, 
with tales of wonder and beauty. If, then, the 
commonest things do not speak to us, it is for 
lack, not of God's wisdom, but our own. 



T ET us remember that there is no great hard- 
ship, or ought not to be, about the fact that 
the most of us are ordinary one-talent people. 
The world of men, like the world of nature, is 
made up of inequalities, valley, intervale, plateau, 
mountain-peak; and which of all these things, 
think you, has the advantage? .... I 
believe that, in the eyes of our Father in Heaven, 
as he looks down on the children of men, the dis- 
tinctions of high and low, of great and small, of 
rich and poor, are blotted out ; and what he cares 
for is not the difference between the five talents, 
and the two, and the one, but only the faithfulness 
with which we use the one talent or the five. 



TX^E need the emotion of joy in our own faces, 
in order that its reflected light may brighten 
other lives. A sunny, joyous, contented man is 
himself a public benefit. 



TTE who, at the end of his course on earth, can 
look back over a life in which thought, and 
love, and duty, justice, kindliness, and help, ap- 
preciation of beauty and good, have been supreme, 
— such a man can but know that his life has been 
a success. While he whose dominant principles 
have been selfish and sordid and earthly, whose 
eyes and ears have been closed to the lovely forms 
and the low, sweet voices of the beautiful, the 
true, and the good, though he come to his end 
loaded down with possessions and decorations, is 
yet written all over with failure. 



INTO one man can get all the prizes of life ; but, 
if he will, he may get the highest, — God, 
character, the inner peace, the life that is a " joy 
forever." Manhood and noble happiness are fruits 
that grow within the reach of every hand that 
wills to pluck them. 



"RY this word " home," I wish you to 
note that I mean a deeper, more sig- 
nificant thing than merely that place where a man 
eats his dinner and goes to sleep at night. The 
real home is where the heart comes to anchor, 
rises and falls gently with the tide, not pulling at 
its cables as if anxious to break away. The real 
home of the mind is such a theory of things as 
satisfies the intellect, and brings mental peace. 
The real home of the soul is such a religious con- 
ception of the world as makes one feel that he 
has found shelter under the paternal wings of a 
mighty and eternal rest. 



COME take the web-cloth of life and cut out 
the garments of indulgence with the shears 
of selfishness; and the corners and remnants not 
needed for mending can go to clothe the naked- 
ness of the world's great needs. 



r PHOSE who are never tempted, and are always 
sweet and pure, are like beautiful and costly 
vases that are kept with the utmost care, and are 
only used as ornaments, or for holding rare and 
fragrant flowers. Let them rejoice in this ; they 
are beautiful and fortunate. But let them not be 
too hard on the common pitchers, made of coarser 
earth and subjected to the rough usage of daily 
wear and tear. If these latter get sometimes soiled 
and broken, the vase in the parlor, that runs no 
risks, is hardly entitled to take on any airs of per- 
sonal superiority. 



TTTHATEVER else is doubtful, there is no 
doubt about the Golden Rule. What the 
world means by practical Christianity is practi- 
cal righteousness ; and by that law every intel- 



ligent man is bound. 



THVERY thought, every word, every deed, 
writes a sentence of good or evil on your 
character; and that which "is written is written." 
No tears, or prayers, or sacraments can ever undo 
a fact. That which is past is past forever. Om- 
nipotence itself cannot make it not to have been ; 
you may, indeed, recover yourself, outgrow the 
evil, and rise in spite of the past; but the evil 
record and the fact of the injury it has done to 
others can never be effaced. 



"|STO university ever yet furnished a man either 
brains or character. Given the man to 
start with, the college may help him, or — it 
must also be said — may injure him. It also de- 
pends on how it is used. Whatever a man may 
have studied or not studied, he is the best edu- 
cated man who is the best fitted for his life-work. 



T^THEN a man lives simply for play, for enjoy- 
ment, for indulgence, he becomes a para- 
site, a thief. He wastes the substance of the 
world which the labor of others has accumulated, 
and produces nothing to repair that waste. There 
are, unfortunately, no prisons for those who only 
use the world's goods, and create nothing to take 
their place ; and yet they as truly steal as do those 
who are behind the bars. 



"XXTIiEN we are miserable it is almost always 
because, like a spoiled child, we sit in the 
midst of plenty, and cry for something just then 
beyond our reach. 



TpIND or make a purpose in life that shall 
redeem it from its petty selfishness and 
purely personal aims. 






TXTE can make our little world beautiful, 
sweet, musical, pleasant, or the opposite, 
very much, as we please ; and we do make it 
what we are. If it seems to us a pretty bad 
world, the question arises whether our mental 
and moral eyes do not need the services of a 
physician ; and whether, instead of spitting out 
our contempt upon our neighbors and friends, we 
do not need to seek some fountain of moral and 
mental cleanliness and health. 



VYTHATEVEK, helps on your higher manhood 
and womanhood, whatever only rests, re- 
freshes, beautifies it, if not allowed to interfere 
with more important things or take away from 
that which you owe to others, — these are lovely 
and healthful growths. But any best thing may 
become a weed if misapplied or abused. 



T^HEE-E is no music in all the world, written or 
unwritten, silent or sung, that can, for one 
moment, match the happy, spontaneous laughter 
of a child. There is no beauty in all the world, 
in statue or canvas or human imagination, that is 
more perfect than that which looks at us out of 
child faces in our homes and in the streets. 
There is nothing the world has yet attained 
higher, finer, sweeter, than the little child that 
God has set in the midst of every one of our 
homes. 



TTjVERY man, woman, and child on earth have 
good in their characters, if we will only 
seek for it, and if we will only find the proper 
stand-point of appreciation. 



TTE best helps the world who helps men to be 
manly, to rise up into their better selves. 



TF any of you have not all you want, or 
think you have been ill-used at the hands of 
life, suppose you go to work and try to reckon up 
just how much you have deserved, and on what 
precisely you would base your claims for more. 
All the good you have is an outright gift ; and 
what you lack or wish does not represent any 
debt to you that any one has unjustly refused to 
pay. 



T T is a slander on God's fair world to sav that 
there is always a serpent lurking in every 
bower of bliss. There need be no serpent in 
the way of healthful pleasure unless we put him 
there. 



ETTER be ever so small a reality on your own 
account than ever so large a shadow of a 
bigger reality. 



XA^E need to remember that we were once 
children ; to be patient not only, but to be 
sympathetic ; to enter into the feelings, the little 
hopes and aspirations, the little disappointments 
of childhood. I believe that if a young man 
can go out into the world remembering that 
father and mother were always patient, always 
considerate, always kindly, always loving ; re- 
membering that, whenever they punished, they 
did it not in anger, as though they enjoyed it, 
but sadly and with pain, suffering even more 
than did the child, — if such a young man can 
go out into the world remembering that father 
and mother did everything possible for the 
happiness and welfare of his boyhood ; if he can 
associate all the sweetness and best things of 
childhood with, his home, — then he has received 
the grandest gift that father and mother can 
possibly confer upon him. 



TXOLD your creed as representing that which 
you know, or have reason to believe, is true. 
Keep it ever subject to revision. Accept whatever 
comes with the credentials of truth. But, above 
all, remember that this truth, after you have at- 
tained it, is only the first step. . . . Religion is 
not something simply to have, it is something to be 
done. Find out the truth, then, concerning your 
inner life, concerning the relation in which you 
ought to stand to your fellow-men, concerning the 
relation in which you ought to stand toward the 
infinite Power that compasses us around ; and 
then, when you have found out the truth, incar- 
nate it. Do it. Work it into institutions and 
deeds. Suppose you know the truth concerning 
the perfect kingdom of God on earth, of what avail 
is that ? Go on, and build that kingdon. 



" ET us have a little of heaven here, if we can, 
and not put it all beyond the grave. 



TF we measure things by their influence on 
human welfare, we must put worry very near 
the front rank of evils ; for perhaps there is noth- 
ing in American life that is a greater destroyer of 
happiness. . . . Our wives are sweet enough, 
our husbands kind enough, our children good and 
promising enough, to make us happy, if only we 
will try to help. There are bitter ingredients now 
and then in the cup of life ; but it, to me, is so 
wondrous, so mysterious, so delicious a draught, 
that, however it ends, I thank God for it every 
day. Nobody but ourselves can poison it ; and we 
shall find in it enough that is sweet and sparkling, 
if only with our own hands we do not squeeze into 
it the bitter wormwood of gratuitous worry. 



nPO know God's laws and to obey them, to help 

others to do the same, this must always be 

the secret of life and the salvation of the world. 



GOING TO SLEEP. 



A FTER the day's long playing, 
Tired as tired can be, 
My baby girl comes saying, 
" Papa, will 'ou rock me ? " 

The busy works of day-time 
Allure her now no more ; 

The books and toys of play-time 
Are scattered round the floor. 

Oft now with shoe and stocking, 
Off with the crumpled dress ; 

She's ready now for rocking, 
For crooning and caress. 

And slowly sinking, sinking, 

The night comes down the skies ; 

While drooping, opening, winking, 
Sleep settles on her eyes. 



She does not fear the sleeping : 
Out o'er the sea of dark, 

Close held in papa's keeping, 
She drifts in her frail bark. 

No matter for the morrow, — 
Enough that papa knows ; 

With smile undimmed by sorrow, 
Out in the dark she goes. 

So should it be with dying : 
Drop earthly cares and fears ; 

In Father's arms you're lying; 
Look up with smiles, not tears. 

You know not of the waking ? 

Be not with fear beguiled ; 
For, when the morning's breaking, 

He'll not forget His child. 



WHERE IS GOD? 



iC (~)H, where is the sea? " the fishes cried, 

As they swam the crystal clearness through. 
" We've heard from of old of the ocean's tide, 

And we long to look on the waters blue. 
The wise ones speak of the infinite sea : 
Oh, who can tell us if such there be ? " 



The lark flew up in the morning bright, 
And sung and balanced on sunny wings ; 

And this was its song : " I see the light, 
I look o'er a world of beautiful things ; 

But, flying and singing everywhere, 

In vain I have searched to find the air," 



I486 409 



NONE LIVETH TO HIMSELF. 



SAY not, " It matters not to me : 

My brother's weal is his behoof ! " 
For, in this wondrous human web, 

If your life's warp, his life is woof. 
Woven all together are the threads, 

And you and he are in one loom : 
For good or ill, for glad or sad, 

Your lives must share one common doom. 



Then let the daily shuttle glide, 

Wound full with threads of kindly care, 
That life's increasing length may be 

Not only strongly wrought, but fair, 
So, from the stuff of each new day, 

The loving hand of Time shall make 
Garments of joy and peace for all ; 

And human hearts shall cease to ache. 



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